A somewhat hollow emotion...

Sooner or later I think I might have to put some furniture into my living room. When I moved into my current residence I had been living in a two bedroom apartment, so all of the furniture that I own actually fit everywhere else and not in the living room. Originally I allowed my son and his friends to use the space for band practice, but once the group fell apart, I quickly made the move to extract their mess so I could recover the space and at least keep it clean and in order. Well, it can't get any cleaner and in order than a space with nothing in it. In many ways I see very little purpose in buying more furniture and adding more stuff for me to have to clean and maintain. However, every time I walk by the empty space I get a hollow feeling that is a bit hard to describe. On one end I feel frustrated for having to restart my life from what almost seems scratch by making all the decisions that I had already done a long time ago, like picking curtains, furniture, lamps, and wall decorations. On the other end I feel relaxed with the inside knowledge that the only person that I am having to please with respect to those kinds of decisions is myself. The simple excuse I give my children for not taking any action in this regard is that it's just us guys, we really don't need any more stuff to be happy.

In a couple of weeks it will already be 18 months since we moved into our new home. I wonder how long it will take me to accept the fact that empty spaces sometimes have a need of their own to be filled. Emotionally we all know what that feels like, to have a part of our lives that is empty and somewhat hollow. Does my living room have this need too? I doubt it. Maybe a big pool table is calling out my name instead of the typical sofa, love seat, chairs, tables, lamps, recliners, and the rest of the knickknacks that accompany the above. I guess that is guy stuff, I could sell the concept to both, my children and also myself. Yeah, but if I buy a pool table then there will be more stuff to clean. Hmmm, I need to rethink the pool table idea too.

Another excuse I have used to convince myself that I should not put anything else in the house is my fear of what happens when my oldest son has lost control of his anger. I really like my dining room table, but on one of the first occasions in which my son and I had a physical altercation one of the six chairs fell victim to his rage and now sits dismembered in my garage. Believe me when I tell you that it is beyond repair. It can be replaced but again, what is the sense of having six chairs when it is only three of us sitting at the table? Another victim of my emotional decision of just letting my more than anal retentiveness personality take a second place to the practicality of what I currently need and don't need in my life. In fact, when I lived in the apartment I could only fit one of two side tables so I had kept the unused one in it's original box for whenever I would move into a larger place. Even though I had taken the boxed contents and laid them against the wall in the family room where I intended to set the beautiful second side table, it actually took me over a year to open it and put it together. The entire assembly took me less than 15 minutes, I wonder why I had such a hard time making the effort? This is really not like me at all.

Change is difficult for some of us. My oldest son in particular has been diagnosed as not being able to make changes in his life with the same ability as others. Do I have this condition too? Could it be that he inherited this cross wiring from his old man? All I know is that I am the type of person that hates seeing things out of place and disorder, yet for some reason or another the sometimes chaotic behaviour of my child drains my will to be myself allowing things to fall apart around me for what seems too long. I now recognize that the act of making my kids do the right thing in the sense of cleanliness quickly changes my mood into a state of anxiety. I instantly get in a bad mood and start barking orders and demands while at the same time frantically going back and forth around the house cleaning everything in sight. Maybe this is why I have chosen to take a step back and not be the clean freak I was just a few years back. However, there has to be a healthier way to deal with this too.

I really like my new home, it has it's own character that makes me feel very comfortable living in it. The backyard view to the mountains is inviting and very pleasant. The dark wood in the kitchen makes me feel like it is my kitchen, a guy's kitchen. My spacious master bedroom takes away any feelings of being enclosed even when the main door is closed behind. If I simply pull the curtains apart, the view of the spa and pool with the beautiful mountains in the background give me a sense of being more outdoors than indoors. A nice wide bathtub in the master bath is always calling my name and inviting me to fill it up to relax after a long day at work. Even the garage feels great since only one vehicle spaciously waits dead smack in the middle with nothing to run into as I open any of it's doors. Each kid has his own room, and as I challenged myself while searching for a home, a guest room sits there waiting for mom to come and visit without the challenges of stairs or steps. If all of this is in such great harmony with my lifestyle, why is it that the empty living room is contributing to a blog post?

As Sigmund Freud would say, "sometimes a dream is just a dream." Well, maybe sometimes an empty space is just and empty space too! I am sure that any well trained therapist would find a dozen different ways to interpret this simple dilemma, probably making it much more complicated than it really needs to be. In the meantime, I have made the either conscious or subconscious decision that the space stays as is, empty. I will allow the somewhat hollow emotion to percolate because I am not really sure it means that much for me to do something about it. I have too many other things to worry about that take a higher priority in my life. Like my children.

Dad